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Is blues a dying art?
- Thread starter zeppfan90
- Start date
OK, I'll elaborate.
I simply mean, playing any form of music doesn't have to BE boring. Blues bass can be quite fun. You have unlimited ways you can walk up or down a run, and you can do some truly interesting and fun patterns.
So for anyone saying playing bass in the genre is boring, I say "congratulations to those of you who have accepted being boring." I simply mean they are satisfied being boring, and then blaming the genre.
No - alive and well here in Portland, OR. I have a open Blues Jam available 4 nights a week. Lots of supportive clubs.
However Jazz carries with it the intellectual class. Schools will teach Jazz, at first called stage bands when Jazz did not have its current standing, along side of Classical but not Blues.
Still as an art form even if you don't know it as a pop musician you have probably had a Blues fondation.
Don't doubt you for a second, but I thing most bands playing live rock or jazz have probably seen similar declines. I don't think people go out to see live bands like they used to. Certainly young people today are more into the DJ scene.
So what's the definition of blues, anyway?
These days it seems to be a code word for "some guy wanking on a Fender Strat and using a comically gruff voice to shout hackneyed lyrics."
To my mind, the "purist" who say that Hendrix, Clapton, SRV, et al don't count as "bluesman" are the reason that the genre has wilted into total irrelevance. If you show a 13 year old a video of any of those three guitar players, there's a good chance they'll want to become a musician. If you show them a video of your typical "blues festival" these days, there's a good chance they'll fall asleep.
These days it seems to be a code word for "some guy wanking on a Fender Strat and using a comically gruff voice to shout hackneyed lyrics."
To my mind, the "purist" who say that Hendrix, Clapton, SRV, et al don't count as "bluesman" are the reason that the genre has wilted into total irrelevance. If you show a 13 year old a video of any of those three guitar players, there's a good chance they'll want to become a musician. If you show them a video of your typical "blues festival" these days, there's a good chance they'll fall asleep.
I have a friend who goes to Europe and makes a killing headlining festivals, filling theaters and bars alike. But if he just played here in the states I doubt he could even keep the lights on. Lots of empty seats. Great music but not enough audience to support it.
You tell us. Is it blues? Blues can be a lot of different things. That's kinda what I've been saying here all along. It almost as if blues is as much an attitude and feeling as it is a musical genre.
Current blues artists I enjoy are Joe Bonamassa, Eric Bibb, Walter Trout, Eden Brent, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Ruthie Foster, and others. It's quite a broad category, of course, but still quite alive.
Until I was nineteen or so, blues and blues-rock (especially that type of classic rock, like the Yardbirds) were my favorite kinds of music. Then it started to seem very samey and boring, but worse is that it really started to seem anachronistic and cliche. I never got into the modern low-fi blues rock stuff either like The Black Keys or White Stripes. Slowly the blues and its progeny fell out of my favor and now my mainstays are jazz, jazz-funk, and post-rock. I am 23 now and I do not know many people who like blues.
And my band does original Christian blues, which is quite a narrow genre indeed.
I would like to hear some of your music. I have been working with a guitarist from our Praise and worship band who has some original blues stuff also. I am 41 now and just starting to appreciate that style music now.
Blues is the story being told, not the music used to tell it.
To "get" Blues you listen to the story being told.
Books are boring.....they all sound the same, use the same format of pages, chapters, paragraphs and sentences. Old books are the same as new books nothing has changed.....but then it is what is said within the book that matters.....not the format.
Blues is the same if you take the time to listen close, Blues is an attitude.
The music can be seen as the book, the lyrics are the story, and in that each song is different, it has a different meaning to different people.
Where Blues suffers as an art form is in its mis-representation and presentation by others as "Blues". In pubs and clubs some rock band or like will say "we are going to play some blues for you", and then proceed to play something that is not really Blues and do it badly, and so introduce anyone that has not heard Blues to something that is not real Blues.....if there are those that have heard it before, it just confirms what they think about Blues....and so it goes on that Blues music gets mis-represent as a music format of cliches.
It has many sub-genres, Blues Rock, Blues Funk, Texas, Blues, Chicago Blues, Jazz Blues, Delta Blues, Country Blues, Brit Blues etc...all great and all moving the genre on in some way.
The best Blues Artists these day normally have something to say rather than something to play, it is in their own voice and their own experience is the story.....it is their Blues they sing and play not someone else's.
That depends upon how narrowly you define The Blues. I remember 40 years ago we used to joke that The Blues was lyrically "mama my baby done left me"And my band does original Christian blues, which is quite a narrow genre indeed.
I consider much Southern gospel and Quartet music pure blues and I am using Blues licks of Jerry Jemmott and others when playing it. My favorite at the moment Blues man turned Gospel singer, to the point of his saying Gospel only as that what works for him is Bishop Neal Roberson
